Fashions Worn in Kansas and Colorado in 1927 and 1928

Like a prairie fire, a revived Ku Klux Klan (KKK) spread quickly across the nation in the 1920s, enrolling upwards of six million white, native-built-in Protestants into its ranks. Promoting "100 Percent Americanism," "Protestantism," "Police force and Gild," and the "eternal maintenance of white supremacy," the Klan found keen reception in quarters where the white bulk population felt threatened by immigration, modernization, and illegal alcohol consumption.

The "Invisible Empire," every bit members daringly chosen it, was particularly strong in the land'due south mid-section. Here national KKK leaders saw the hooded order'southward best chance to restore America to the Arcadian days of its founding. Then great was their hope that Kansas City was selected as the site of the KKK's second national convention, or "klonvocation" in Klan-speak, in September 1924.

Addressing Klan members at Kansas City's Convention Hall, Regal Wizard Dr. Hiram Wesley Evans said, "This klonvocation, held hither in the slap-up Middle West, is assembled on the battlefield of the firsthand future. Some of the Eastern States are today lost to truthful Americanism and must be re-won, but the American population of the Heart West [is] …left to do valiant boxing."

Cover page of the Proceedings from the 2nd Klonvokation. Source: Net Archive.

Despite the presence of 5,000 visiting Klan members, the 1924 klonvocation did not provoke recorded opposition from the city's populations of Catholics (a prime Klan target in the 1920s), African Americans, or Jews. The Klan marched in no parades and burned no crosses. The convention was dedicated solely to the "official business of the organization," Klan leaders stated.

Just the dull administrative nature of the klonvocation in Kansas City obscures the tumultuous history of the KKK in the greater Kansas Urban center area during the interwar years. This history includes the activities of Klan members from both sides of the state line who gathered to celebrate their shared white ethnic identity and transcend the historic divisions of the Kansas-Missouri border. This history is farther complicated because Klansmen on the Kansas side of the line organized their city's largest KKK chapter in part to battle the influence of Kansas City, Missouri, business and political interests in Wyandotte County affairs.

The local history of the KKK tin best be understood in consideration of the national historical context of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Although Klan membership reached its zenith in that decade, the Invisible Empire is all-time remembered for the ii most notorious phases of its history. First founded by six onetime Confederate officers in 1865, the postal service-Civil War KKK was defended to terrorizing African American freedmen and women back into submission and resisting the political Reconstruction efforts of the federal government. The Klan's influence and violence spread across the Due south, its ability and lawlessness alarming officials, who finally brought it down in 1872 with the mass arrest and conviction of its members.

After the second resurgence in the 1920s, the S saw another outbreak of Klan violence post-obit the Second World State of war, as a response to civil rights demands and gains past African Americans. Like the first Klan, this version of the hooded lodge likewise sought to terrorize its victims back into their "place." This phase connected through the 1960s every bit the Klan killed civil rights leaders and workers, and destroyed African American churches. Heavy infiltration by the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped bring this bloody chapter to an end.

Situated betwixt these two eras was another Ku Klux Klan, one that attracted millions of followers in the 1920s, most of whom would exist described as otherwise "skilful, solid middle class citizens," in the words of Stanley Frost, a gimmicky journalist. The stimulus to this Klan's creation is more mysterious; its program of Americanism, Protestantism, Law and Order, and White Supremacy less definite than the simpler hates of other Klan eras. The amorphous character of the Klan of the 1920s gave it the flexibility to arrange to whatever local conditions information technology found.

The story of the KKK in the greater Kansas City area is best documented in the records of the chapters, or "klaverns," on the Kansas side of the country line. A dedicated core of anti-Klan politicians at the land and local level fought the KKK's efforts to command Kansas. The battle left a paper trail that makes it easier to follow the tale of the hooded gild in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK), than in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri (KCMO). But such was the uniformity of Klan appeal to a detail demographic group nationwide that a detailed expect at the Kansas Metropolis, Kansas, men who joined the order will—if not unmask individual Missouri members—at least sketch a recognizable silhouette. Information technology is almost sure that the traits of KCK members revealed below would exist duplicated in KCMO if membership records existed.

The rich membership information revealing the Klan membership in KCK volition be the second step toward understanding the Klan'southward entreatment to white, native-born Protestant men in the Kansas City expanse. A more immediate question is, what did this new Klan do in Kansas City? The history of 1920s-era Klan behavior included burning crosses, marching ominously down main streets, and intimidating enemies. Did the design prevail in Kansas City? The elusive "why?" will complete the flick after the activities of Klan members and the segment of guild they represented are described.

The Klan'due south route to Kansas City began in Georgia. Colonel (the title was strictly honorary) William Joseph Simmons raised the club from its post-Civil War grave in 1915, fulfilling a childhood dream to revive the KKK. A onetime Methodist circuit rider who made his living selling fraternal life insurance policies, Simmons lay recovering from an auto accident in an Atlanta infirmary when a vision of Klansmen in flowing white robes stirred his imagination. "Equally the moving picture faded out," Simmons wrote, "I got downwards on my knees and swore that I would constitute a congenial arrangement that would be a memorial to the Ku Klux Klan [of post-Ceremonious War memory]." Simmons led 15 men upward Stone Mount, Georgia, on Thanksgiving eve 1915, where they pledged themselves past the calorie-free of a burning cross to Americanism, Protestantism, and the "eternal maintenance of white supremacy."

Simmons'south new order floundered despite unofficial service in World State of war One every bit a voluntary domestic spy service. The Klan counted only a few 1000 members in 1920. The guild likely would accept withered away without the aid of Edward Y. Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler of the Southern Publicity Clan. The pair sensed the Klan's potential as a national motion and offered to market place information technology across the country. Simmons, an admittedly bad ambassador, agreed. His bargain with Clarke and Tyler would loosen the Klan from its southern moorings for the first time and expanded its influence across the country.

The KKK arrived in Kansas City, Kansas, in early on 1921. Led by King Kleagle George T. McCarron, a Missourian, a provisional chapter called the Sunflower Club was soon formed. McCarron's "Kleagles" (Klan membership salesmen) found prospective members in the city'due south small businesses, churches, factories, fraternal lodges, shops, wedlock halls, and runway yards. Federal, state, and local government employees signed up, too. A yr later the Sunflower Club received its charter from the parent Georgia Klan to become Wyandotte Klan No. 5, Realm of Kansas, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. Chapters too formed in Rosedale (Klan No. 17), however a carve up metropolis in 1922, and further westward in Bonner Springs (Klan No. 9). The chapter numbers represented the order each i was formed within the state. The Kansas City "Klavern" spawned a split Argentine chapter (Klan No. ninety) later in the decade.

Postcard of Minnesota Avenue in downtown Kansas Urban center, Kansas, the site of a large Klan parade in 1927. Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society.

Beyond their status as slogans for the organization, what did the Klan'due south version of Americanism, Protestantism, Patriotism, Law and Order, and White Supremacy look like in practice? The question tin can only exist answered by newspaper accounts and the depositions taken during a state [Kansas] investigation of the order. The following listing is therefore not exhaustive, and countless other Klan acts were probable committed in the Kansas City area in the 1920s. But their known activities locally included:

• The Klan held rallies, which included cross burnings and initiation ceremonies, drawing upwards of 15,000 regional participants and spectators;
• The KCK and KCMO Klans paraded two,500 strong together down Minnesota Avenue in December 1927;
• The Klans celebrated their cantankerous-country community with picnics, concerts, and lectures to entertain crowds of up to 25,000;
• The Klan engaged in philanthropy, donating coin to widows, Protestant churches and hospitals, and even African American churches and hospitals, although black institutions received much less money and some declined the donations on principle. Considered united nations-American and united nations-Christian, Cosmic institutions were excluded from Klan charity;
• The Klan enforced "Blue Laws" on the Kansas side, prohibiting Sun retail hours to close downwards grocery stores owned by Catholics, Jews, and Eastern Orthodox Christians, some other "un-Christian" church building in Klan eyes;
• The Klan boycotted businesses deemed disloyal to Kansas Urban center, Kansas, such as those that advertised in the Kansas City Star (which was perceived to bolster the Missouri side) instead of the Kansas City Kansan;
• The Klan conducted detective piece of work for the canton attorney; Kansas City, Kansas; and the national Klan organisation. The Wyandotte County attorney belonged to the Klan, equally did numerous other elected officials;
• The Klan broke upwards lovers' lanes "petting parties";
• The Klan led efforts to remove "smut" magazines from drugstore magazine racks;
• The Klan sought to ban Sunday movies;
• The Klan brought the "Nascence of a Nation" moving picture ballsy—set in the post-Ceremonious War era and portraying Klansmen as defenders of white women against black men—to Kansas Urban center over the objections of African Americans and Matrimony Regular army veterans, among others;
• The Klan threatened to beat out the schoolhouse superintendent if he immune a racially integrated school pageant;
• The Klan threatened to trounce and bomb African Americans who moved into majority white neighborhoods;
• The Klan vandalized Catholic cemeteries;
• The Klan'due south threats of violence split Wyandotte Klan No. five when 450 men quit in July 1922 over the issue. Dissident Klansmen organized "reformed" Klans, but their efforts to replace the Georgia-based KKK failed;
• The Klan got the Argentine High School dancing instructor fired for teaching "jazz" dancing;
• The Klan removed Sinclair Lewis'due south novel Elmer Gantry from public library shelves and hid it in a vault because of its negative portrayal of a Protestant clergyman;
• The Klan won more than 136 political races in Kansas City, Kansas, climaxing with their capture of City Hall in 1927, when Klansman Don C. McCombs won the mayor'due south role. These Klansmen held City Hall for nearly 30 years, even afterward they were no longer formal members of the Klan itself.

Who were the men, women, and children who roiled the city with their white robes, violent threats, prying eyes, and sequestered books? How big was the threat?

Despite claims of v,000 to seven,000 members in KCK in 1922, the bodily number was closer to i,100, with peradventure another 800 joining the men's rolls over the decade. At to the lowest degree 400 Kansas City women joined the auxiliary "Kamelia Klan No. 27." Like their male counterparts, KCK Klanswomen engaged in philanthropic, social, and ceremonial activities. Wyandotte county boys joined the Junior Klan. A 1925 initiation anniversary in Tonganoxie, Kansas, "naturalized" 500 boys into the mysteries of the Invisible Empire. The Junior Klan's one reported public appearance was also in 1925, when they presented an American flag to the pastor of Advent Christian church at 24th Street and Garfield Avenue.

People in Klan costume posing with a Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad automobile. The railroad was one of the largest employers of KCK Klan members during the 1920s. Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Social club.

No information on the women and boys who joined the Klan auxiliaries exists exterior of the newspaper accounts. Only the get-go 1,000 men who joined the Klan in KCK left a more detailed impression. Following the Klan's accelerate beyond the country in the early on 1920s, Kansas Governor Henry J. Allen dispatched secret agents to collect data on Klan members for an ouster suit the land was preparing against the Invisible Empire. Membership rosters were among the valuable records collected by Allen's agents, especially the rich records of Wyandotte Klan No. five. The identities of more than than 900 KCK men have been identified thanks to Allen's list, now held at the Library of Congress.

The middle-class profile of the Kansas City Klansmen observed by journalists of the era begins to emerge when Klansmen are compared with Kansas City's non-Klan population. The numbers used for comparison'due south sake are based on the US Demography Bureau's high, mid, and low occupational condition designations:

• 4.4 percent of KCK Klan members engaged in high, non-manual, white collar occupations, such as attorney or dr.. Only 1.7 percent of non-Klan citizens enjoyed this condition;
• 24 percent of Klan members were mid-level, non-manual workers, such as small business organization owners, managers, or public officials. Only 5.v percentage of the non-Klan citizens appeared in this category;
• 27 percent of Kansas Urban center Klan members were employed in low, non-manual jobs, such every bit clerks and salesmen, as compared with 14.eight percentage of not-Klan workers;
• nineteen.iii pct of the Knights were skilled, blue-neckband craftsmen such equally railroad engineers, carpenters, or machinists. 17.vi percent of the non-Klan population worked in this field;
• 19 percent of Klansmen were apprentices or semi-skilled workers, such as railroad switchmen, brakemen, or meter readers. 23.2 percent of the non-Klan population was semi-skilled;
• Only three.2 per centum of Klansmen toiled as unskilled workers, compared to 24.5 pct of the non-Klan population;
• The unknown skill levels deemed for the remaining three.i percentage of Klansmen and 12.7 percentage of the non-Klan population.

The three virtually common Klan occupations were pocket-size business owner, clerk, and railroad engineer. Almost Klansmen worked with at least one other Klan member. Twenty-v Klansmen employed a fellow member. Kansas City's top x employers of Klansmen were Armour and Company; the urban center government of Kansas Metropolis; the Chicago, Stone Isle and Pacific Railroad; the Kansas City Railway Company; the Kansas City Structural Steel visitor; the Santa Fe Railroad; Swift and Company; the federal government; the Union Pacific Railroad; and the Wyandotte County authorities.

Henry J. Allen, Governor of Kansas who created a membership roster of Klan members. Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Guild.

The nearly thoroughly Klan institution in town was the city's south district court, which included Judge (later Mayor) Don C. McCombs, Principal Deputy Clerk James P. Fox, Junior Clerk Bina Southward. Quick Jr., Marshal Charles Arrow, and Deputy Marshal Charles Langford. In 1928 the Topeka Uppercase Journal reported that ten Kansas Urban center court marshals were Klansmen. The organization defended to Constabulary and Order had its hand firmly i of the urban center'southward most of import sources of enforcement power. Additionally, both the police force department'south day and night captains belonged to the KKK.

Some other set of numbers puts the Kansas City Klan in course perspective. Combining the high, mid, low not-transmission, and skilled craftsmen produces a number which can be described equally the Klan'southward Heart-Class Quotient (MCQ). Wyandotte Klan No. v had an MCQ of 75 percent. The MCQ of Kansas City's unabridged population was xl percentage. The quotient for those ineligible for Klan membership—Catholics, Jews, African Americans and the foreign born—was 19 percent. Native-born white men were closest to the Klan members with an MCQ of 49 percentage.

The MCQ grows in significance when information technology is applied to example studies of Klan chapters across the country. Nationally it remains close to the Kansas Urban center metric: Aurora, Illinois, 79 percent; Denver, Colorado, 70 percent; Richmond, Indiana, 75 percent. Scores in the mid-70s prevail despite differences of geography and economic system. Given the consistent 75 pct middle-class quotient across the country it is reasonable to assume the same percent applied to Klan members in Kansas Urban center, Missouri.

Additional demographic details from the lives of KCK Klansmen add to the portrait of the surface area Klan. The average fellow member was 35 years erstwhile. He was married. He owned his dwelling house. He had a l percent take a chance of living on the same cake every bit another Klansman. Some Klansmen had equally many equally 6 Klan members on their block. Kansas City's thickest Klan cake was constitute along Kansas Avenue in Armourdale, where eight Klansmen lived, including some of the most agile members. Ninety-v Klansmen shared an address with another member, half of whom shared a surname. At least 88 Klansmen were related to another member. Numerous father-son, brother-brother, and father-in-law/son-in-law Klan combinations were establish in the Invisible Empire.

A typical KC Klansman was born in Kansas or Missouri. Other fertile states were Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska, and Indiana. In other words, well-nigh ninety percent of Kansas City Klan members had Midwestern or Middle West origins. The Klan may take had southern roots, simply the Kansas City affiliate did non. One exception to this is Arkansas native Thomas Y. Baird, who is best known as co-owner of the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro Leagues team. Wyandotte Klan No. 5 had iii strange-built-in members despite Klan proscriptions confronting their inclusion with members from Germany, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Approximately 1-third of Kansas Metropolis Klansmen had at least one foreign born parent.

The hooded order attracted numerous veterans. Xv percent of members served in World War One. Kansas City Klan chapters too included men who were veterans of the Spanish American War, the Philippines Insurrection, the Mexican Border State of war, and the South African (Boer) War. 1 elderly member had fought for the Union in the Civil War. Another claimed conscientious objector status on his World War One typhoon registration bill of fare. A Kansas City Klansman died on the eve of World War Two when he was training draftees in 1940. Klansmen led both the American Legion and United Spanish State of war Veterans in KCK. Klansmen as well led many of the city's fraternal lodges. The first three leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in Kansas City had been leaders of the metropolis's largest Masonic hall.

The typical Klansman attended a mainline Protestant church building. Klansmen were Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians. No Klan members were discovered in the pews of fundamentalist churches such equally the Church building of the Nazarene or the Church building of Christ. Kansas City clergymen joined the Klan. Pro-Klan churches in Kansas City included the Get-go Christian, Central Avenue Methodist, London Heights Methodist, Metropolitan Artery Methodist, Quindaro Christian, Trinity English Lutheran, State Avenue Baptist, Immanuel Baptist, Chelsea Baptist, Advent Christian, University United Brethren, and the Welborn Customs churches.

At first glance, the heart-course composition of the 1920s KKK in Kansas City, Kansas, looks almost reassuring in dissimilarity with the lynching and church bombings that appeared in the 1860s and 1960s. Certainly they were null like the Neo-Nazi skinheads who make full Klan ranks today. It is nigh tempting to wonder whether the city was ever in real peril with such solid citizens behind the sheets. And withal like the Klan of today and its earlier eruptions, the folks who stocked the KKK in Kansas City also wrought violence and intimidation on their neighbors.

Kansas Urban center Klansmen vigorously debated the blazon of violence Wyandotte Klan No. v would deploy. One group favored the nighttime-righting, horse-whipping mode of before vigilantes, while another promoted the subtler fine art of persuasion, a friendly confront of intimidation. The start test of the competing factions came when school superintendent Matthew E. Pearson appear plans to integrate the annual spring pageant parade. The real infighting began when the group'south local leader, Exalted Cyclops DeVirda H. Burcham, was defendant of planning an attack on Pearson for his barb to white supremacy. Depositions taken during the state ouster adjust detailed how a special squad of "Kluxers" dressed in dark robes fabricated specially for the operation would permit the superintendent know he had "been dealt with by the Klan," although the assailants would not to effort to "permanently maim or kill [him]." The incident concluded without physical harm to the victim when a delegation of Klan members dressed in nondescript clothing visited Pearson and convinced him to cancel his plans to "mix" the parade.

But the damage was done. The Pearson affair carve up the chapter nearly in two as men disgusted with even the thought of overt violence quit the society. While some deserters formed rival Klans which abjured violence, their reform efforts failed. Most of the prominent quitters institute their style back to the doors of Wyandotte Klan No. 5. Pearson later denied any visit from the Klan and asserted the change in plans was his idea.

Pearson's denial illustrates how the Klan'south trigger-happy ability was not express to physical injury. Intimidation could work merely likewise. The order'due south historic reputation for violence combined with threats terrorized sections of Kansas Urban center without throwing punches or cinching ropes. In Oct 1925, 100 men "purported to be members of the Ku Klux Klan" nailed a note to the door of the home of W.H. Summers, an African American man who had moved to 646 Troup Avenue, "usually a white department of the metropolis," co-ordinate to the Kansas Urban center, Kansas, Kansan. The bulletin warned Summers to movement before nightfall. Summers complained to police. Captain Stanley Beatty told the frightened human the city could non afford to station a police force officer at his home. Beatty promised to contact Klan leaders and verify if the hooded society was responsible for the threat or if other men were acting in its name. Given Beatty's membership in the Klan the promise was an like shooting fish in a barrel one to brand.

Beatty's role in quelling the episode reveals the structural violence Klan leaders could utilise in advancing the order's agenda. When an organization controls the levers of ability, concrete violence is a convenient option but not a necessity.

Some other issue was the question of where to brainwash Mexican children as more Hispanic families arrived from the south in Kansas City. Much to the business organization of white parents, Emerson Schoolhouse in the Argentine district accommodated more than than 100 Mexican children in its crowded classrooms. Neighborhood leader Dr. K.C. Haas of the Argentine Activities Association and a female representative of the Parent Teachers Association approached the Mexican consulate in search of permission to build a separate school for the immigrant children. The official agreed and the issue faded for a fourth dimension thanks to the diplomacy of the Klansman Haas and his counterpart, the wife of a Klan member. But other Klansmen, impatient with the building of the segregated schoolhouse, invoked the vigilante selection and clashed with Mexican residents over the school question, showing in one case once more the friction within the order over physical and other types of Klan violence.

The enforcement of white, Protestant cultural norms known as "Bluish Laws" reveals another instance of the structural violence available to the Klan. Kansas City grocers and consumers had long ignored an 1868 city ordinance prohibiting the sale of foodstuffs on the Sabbath; Lord's day to many Protestants. Well-nigh residents accepted the Sunday hours every bit a necessity. Milk and meat purchased on Saturday would spoil by Mon in a city where poorer residents lacked refrigerators. In the summer of 1923, notwithstanding, Canton Chaser Justus N. Baird began surveilling the grocers to run into who was violating the law. Dispatching a criminal investigator to collect names, Baird arrested more than 50 grocers over the following two weekends. The papers noted the religious aspect of Baird's campaign in the surnames of the targeted businessmen: Moskos, Stempleman, and Fitzpatrick, men of Greek, Jewish, and Irish descent whose Sabbaths were not necessarily observed on Lord's day. The grocers eventually won their example in courtroom, defeating Baird, his assistant attorney, and his investigator, all three of whom belonged to the Klan.

What motivated Kansas Citians to bring together the hooded guild? The deeper reasons announced to be changes in the economy, government, and the culture at the national, regional, and local levels.

The KKK of the 1920s, nationally and in the Kansas Cities, was in reaction to and a rejection of the increasing centralization of power of the preceding xxx years. A larger authorities hierarchy had emerged to match the mass industrialization and corporatization of the economy and social club. Governments at the local level employed the same economies of scale and professional person expertise equally the corporations to encounter the complexities of modernistic life. One such innovation was the city commission form of municipal regime. City commissions sought to take power from traditional neighborhood officials (the council-mayor organization) in the metropolis'due south wards and distribute it "at large" throughout a customs. The measure empowered large business concern leaders to promote their economic interests as the unified interests of the wider community. Tax money should be spent on improvements that benefitted the entire city, they argued, not for the neighborhood projects the insular-thinking ward council members preferred.

In KCK the city commission model tended to entreatment to progressive businessmen who sought closer economical and political ties with KCMO interests. The older council-mayor model appealed to small business organization owners and longtime neighborhood leaders. KCK adopted the metropolis commission model in 1909. Futurity Klansmen campaigned confronting it. A dozen years later one of the Klan'south first acts when it arrived in the urban center was to engage "Major Generals" to oversee the metropolis's 7 wards. (Rosedale would become the eighth ward in 1922). The generals functioned similar the ward heelers of old and helped citizens file complaints with the constabulary reporting potholes, bootleggers, and other undesirables in the neighborhood. Klan major generals were an endeavour to regain the power lost to the urban center commission.

These same Klan members led a failed attempt in 1926 nether the guise of the Representative Authorities League to restore the quango-mayor course of city government. In 1940 these same men helped defeat a referendum to rent a city managing director, another cinch in the belt of centralization in their stance. The important thing to note is that their objection to centripetal political forces animated their activism before, during, and later on the Klan was in town. Some historians of the Klan believe the hooded order served as a big-scale organizing force for preexisting political divisions within a city. It is no coincidence that the traditional neighborhood leaders who joined the Klan had led the Armourdale Business organisation Men's Gild, the 6th Ward Civic Guild, the London Heights Comeback Association, the Argentine Activities Club, and the Riverview Booster Club. Information technology is also no coincidence that Klansmen did not lead citywide service or business concern organizations such every bit the Rotary Order or the Bedroom of Commerce. In this calorie-free, the Klan's takeover of the Republican County Cardinal Committee in 1926 wasn't simply a victory for the KKK, but a victory for a faction of the political party and the city that felt information technology had been betrayed by big business leaders who saw the city's fortunes linked with Kansas City, Missouri.

The deeper roots of their antipathy toward KCMO were planted in the 19th century and harvested by the Klan in the 1920s. The stumbling Klan movement Colonel Simmons surrendered to Edward Y. Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler of the Southern Publicity Association in 1920 soon establish its stride under the new management. Capitalizing on Clarke's previous success as a professional borough booster—clients dubbed him the "Doctor of sick towns" – the pair instructed their sales force to "find out what was troubling a community and to offer the Klan every bit the solution." And what troubled Kansas City, Kansas, was Kansas Urban center, Missouri.

Formed by the 1886 consolidation of Armourdale, Armstrong, Kansas Urban center, Riverview, and Wyandotte, Kansas Urban center, Kansas, was an attempt to compete with Kansas City, Missouri, for the native wealth they saw gravitating to their powerful neighbor. Only the conglomeration failed to unite the new urban center commercially or civically. 20 years afterward some of the former contained towns regretted the merger. Old divisions and rivalries prevailed as Kansas City struggled to course a collective civic identity.

Whether information technology was Clarke'southward proffer or not, the Klan seized on the city's celebrated sectionalism equally an entry point into its politics. Uniting disparate civic social club and neighborhood leaders, the Klan gave them a vehicle for combining and projecting their interests alee of their rivals, locally and across the land line. The unique contours of KCK history and the Klan's ability to present itself as the solution probably explains why the order thrived in Kansas more than Missouri.

By 1920 Kansas City, Kansas, wasn't looking then much to compete with its powerful neighbor every bit to escape its influence. Emporia paper editor William Allen White'due south entry in the 1924 Kansas gubernatorial race was portrayed by supporters every bit a principled protestation campaign against Republican and Democratic candidates he viewed as comparatively anti-Klan. Only Kansas Metropolis Klansmen saw White's run as a cynical Kansas City Star move to control Kansas politics with a candidate who shared their progressive outlook. Worse, White was associated with Kansas Chaser General Charles B. Griffith, a Klan foe who also sat on the country's corporate charter board. The charter board had the power to make or intermission the Klan in the state. A Georgia corporation, the Klan had never received permission to exercise business in Kansas. If they did not defeat the anti-Klan board members in 1924 they could be ousted from the state on technical grounds. White's campaign highlighted the importance of Griffith's reelection. Griffith was also identified as a Star progressive. Following the triumph of the anti-Klan lease board candidates, pro-Klan legislators attempted to legalize the KKK in Kansas by law in early 1925. The measure out passed the country senate simply narrowly failed in the house thanks to parliamentary legerdemain. The Klan'southward final resort was the US Supreme Court, which in 1927 declined to hear their case. The order was legally expressionless in Kansas, an unrecognized out of state corporation.

Kansas City men besides joined the KKK to combat what Frederick Lewis Allen described as the "Revolution in Morals and Manners," in his best-selling history of the 1920s, Only Yesterday. Klan members feared the revolution. Their fearfulness was rational; the world was changing. Sex was condign more casual. Fashions were more revealing. Klan members countered the revolution by raiding petting and necking parties on the outskirts of Kansas City. They distrusted the automobile for the privacy it offered unmarried couples. The Klan opposed jazz dancing and jazz music every bit immoral and lascivious. As mentioned to a higher place, they succeeded in getting the Argentine High School dancing instructor fired for his violation of their traditional moral sensibilities.

William Allen White in 1924, during his campaign against the Klan. Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society.

Peradventure at the root of their fears of changing power dynamics and mores was a perceived loss of prestige and predominance in American society. The one-time white, native-built-in Protestant America was giving manner to a more diverse society. Role of the Klan'south appeal was its promise to reinforce or reinstate what information technology described as 100 Percent Americanism: patriotism, piety, Protestantism, and the prohibition of alcohol were major elements of the program. Clearing and urbanization threatened their manner of life. "The eternal maintenance of white supremacy" comprised all these hopes and fears. Their enemies represented the changes they saw around them, and overwhelming them.

Simply it was not merely the loss of power, merely more than broadly the loss of community which ignited the prairie fire that burned beyond the canton in the 1920s, according to historian Leonard Moore. The waning political and economic ability, the triumph of immorality, and the open disregard of Prohibition all undermined their feeling of a cohesive cultural community capable of leading America. Their desire for a return to the by created the most significant Klan events. The annual regional Fourth of July celebrations, which gathered up to 25,000 Klansmen from KCK and KCMO and smaller towns in their orbit, provided the largest occasion for joint Kansas-Missouri KKK events between the wars. The summer gatherings featured baseball games between Klan teams, concerts, and patriotic speeches by male and female Klan members. The celebrations concluded with the burning of a giant cross while a Klan band played the Star Spangled Imprint.

Regional conventions also enhanced feelings of community betwixt Kansas and Missouri Klan members. A November 1926 gathering of the Klans featured the Grand Dragons of the Missouri and Kansas KKKs at the head of a parade featuring men'south, women's, and children's Klan organizations. A troop of horses wearing Klan regalia led 40 automobiles adorned with "burning" electrical crosses. A September 1927 parade led to the site of a joint initiation anniversary for 150 new Kansas and Missouri members, where they laid down their historic enmity at the altar of the Invisible Empire.

The Kansas Metropolis, Kansas, Klan hosted a district Klan convention in December 1927 when Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans returned to speak. Some 2,500 Missouri and Kansas Klan members marched down Minnesota Avenue in his honor. Klan floats symbolized their causes: "The Niggling Red School" honored (Protestant) public education. "The Covered Wagon" commemorated the pioneer bulldoze of old stock Americans who conquered a continent. And a coffin carrying the body in effigy of New York Governor Al Smith, the Cosmic Democrat who would win his party'due south presidential nomination in 1928, manifested the Klan'due south stringent anti-Catholicism. The parade climaxed at the Eagles Hall, where 5,000 Klan men, women, and children gathered to enjoy a minstrel show.

The resurgent second Ku Klux Klan would describe to a halt past the end of the 1920s. Contributing factors to its decline included its illegal status in Kansas, internal disputes over the use of violence or other controversies, and the restrictive Clearing Act of 1924 that cooled some of the anti-immigrant fervor that had fueled the rise of the organisation in the outset place. The Kansas Citians who joined it during the interwar years moved on to other causes. In Kansas City, Kansas, where political power was a major stimulus to Klan growth, members drifted away later on taking Metropolis Hall and the local Republican Political party machinery. The Klan had outlived its usefulness later on that. The order'due south illegality in the wake of the lease fight drove some members out of the organisation. Neither patriotic celebrations, nor minstrel shows for that thing, depended on the Klan for an audition. The Ku Klux Klan had its moment during the interwar years in the two Kansas Cities. Simply that moment had passed.

Acknowledgement:

Funding for this essay is generously provided by the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area.

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